It is amazing how much information can be gained from newspaper family notices, and in particular funeral notices.

Here is an example from Trove in the Sydney Morning Herald of Tuesday 27 November 1900, on page 10:

I had been searching for the death of one Mary Nugent. What I can learn about this family from these three notices is that this Mary Nugent was the wife of Mr P. Nugent (perhaps Patrick?). They lived at 57 Balmain Road, Leichhardt, and their (surviving) children were James, Francis, Alfred, William and George. They also had a daughter, Mary, who married William Beardmore.

This is a lot of information about one family, and is especially useful where the surname is relatively common, such that a search in the NSW BDM indexes is inconclusive. It is even more useful if the children had been born after the 100 year cutoff for the NSW Birth Index (currently 1911), where I might otherwise have had to order a copy of the death registration to see who her children were.

Unfortunately this isn’t the Mary Nugent I was looking for, as she was a widow. If she had remarried, and she may have, her surname would be different. At least there is enough evidence in these funeral notices for me to discount this Mary without any further searching. And what a bonus it would have been if she was the Mary I was searching for!

World Vital Records is one of the more recent entrants to the online genealogy records market, and has access to a lot of material from Archive CD Books and the Queensland Family History Society.

Their World Collection, which includes Australia, New Zealand and the UK, is normally double this price, and so this is great value. If you are already a subscriber the year will be added on the end. I am now a subscriber until March 2011!

This is a real bargain. It cost me $72.77 in Australian dollars this morning.

The free access announced on the 11th August has proved so popular that they are extending the deadline to the 18th August.

I already have an account with them which I use frequently. Government Gazettes, Police Gazettes, directories, and a lot of content from Queensland FHS make this worthwhile to have a good hard look around!

The ad seems to have miraculously changed, but the half-price offer for the World collection is a great deal, especially if you have, as I do, ancestors from the States as well as Australia and New Zealand.

I was born in Sydney and grew up in country NSW. I've lived in Sydney since leaving school and starting university. My mother is the descendant of farmers and graziers on her father's side, and professionals on her mother's; and my father is a South Sea Islander. Read More…